Tag: star trek

Star Trek: Short Treks is a series of four stand-alone short episodes of Star Trek: Discovery that start next week on October 4th on CBS All Access as a lead-in to the return of the show early next year, and each will focus on a particular character. The first of these is “Runaway”, starring Mary Wiseman as Tilly.

Star Trek: Discovery has its Spock. Ethan Peck, the grandson of late actor Gregory Peck, will be the third actor to play the character, behind Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto. “We searched for months for an actor who would, like them, bring his own interpretation to the role,” said executive producer Alex Kurtzman. “An actor who would, like them, effortlessly embody Spock’s greatest qualities, beyond obvious logic: empathy, intuition, compassion, confusion, and yearning. Ethan Peck walked into the room inhabiting all of these qualities, aware of his daunting responsibility to Leonard, Zack, and the fans, and ready to confront the challenge in the service of protecting and expanding on Spock’s legacy. In that spirit, we’re thrilled to welcome him to the family.”

Spock’s appearance was announced at San Diego Comic-Con last month. We know that the U.S.S. Discovery answers a distress call from a pre-Kirk NCC-1701 U.S.S. Enterprise commanded by Captain Christopher Pike, who will be played by Inhumans‘ Anson Mount.

Peck is best known for the movies In Time and The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, as well as the series 10 Things I Hate About You.

Wow…Patrick Stewart just announced at Star Trek: Las Vegas that he will star in a new Star Trek series featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard himself! The show will follow Picard in the “next chapter” of his life – presumably after he was captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Alex Kurtzman, who is currently heading production of Star Trek: Discovery, will also manage this show.

I’m still getting caught up after some personal travel and a variety of various things related to the end of the school year, musicals, plays, etc. – so, so busy! So here is a quick recap of notables this past week!

Star Wars will get animated again, but this time it will have an anime-inspired style. Disney has ordered up and production started on Star Wars Resistance, which is set in the period preceding Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The show will follow young Kazuda Xiono, a pilot recruited to spy on the growing First Order. Familiar and new characters will be featured, including BB-8, Poe Dameron (voiced by Oscar Isaac) and Captain Phasma (voiced by Gwendoline Christie). It will premiere this Fall on the Disney Channel in the U.S., followed by regular airings on Disney XD worldwide.

YouTube has cast two familiar Harry Potter alums in its upcoming SF thriller series Origin. Tom Felton and Natalia Tena will join newcomer Sen Mitsuji to star in the series which follows a group of strangers who are stranded on a spacecraft bound for a distant planet and must work together to survive.

SYFY has elected not to pick up the Tremors series, which would have brought back Kevin Bacon. Bacon posted on Instagram, “#Tremors Sad to report that my dream of revisiting the world of Perfection will not become a reality. Although we made a fantastic pilot (IMHO) the network has decided not to move forward. Thanks to our killer cast and everyone behind the scenes who worked so hard. And always keep one eye out for GRABOIDS!”

Paramount apparently plans to move forward with two separate Star Trek films simultaneously. We already knew about the Tarantino-helmed R-rated production, but now it appears that Tarantino’s project is in some way independent of the current Kelvin-timeline movies, but it is very hazy what that means yet. It could be a different ship and crew, or it could be yet another timeline. Instead, a new Kelvin-timeline movie to follow up Star Trek Beyond is now getting started, with female British director S.J. Clarkson in negotiations to take point – which would make her the first female to head a film in the frachise’s history. This film would also bring back Chris Hemsworth as George Kirk, James Kirk’s father, who appeared in a cameo in 2009’s Star Trek.

Last but not least, Battlestar Galactica and Longmire star Katee Sackhoff will launch back into space aboard the Netflix series Another Life, about astronaut Niko Breckinridge (Sackhoff) on a mission to search for extraterrestrial intelligence and explore an alien artifact.

At WonderCon this weekend CBS released a deleted scene from the finale of Star Trek Discovery that shows the return of a group suspected to be behind the “black badge” Starfleet members, and show where the show is heading in its upcoming second season.

Note: The scene may present spoilers if you’d rather wait, or if you haven’t finished watching the first season…so stop reading now.(continue reading…)

It’s time to come out of our holiday-induced coma and get caught up on the news, so here is some rapidfire TidBits…

Sadly, we have learned that actress Heather Menzies-Urich, wife of late actor Robert Urich and best known as Louisa in The Sound Of Music, passed away on December 24th at the age of 68. Obscure SF TV fans may also known her for playing Jessica in the TV series version of Logan’s Run.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi added another $99 million over the holiday weekend, although analysts expected more from the weekend. Fans seem to be greatly debating the merits of the movie…from our point of view it was a good movie but with a slew of technical problems. Expect a spoiler-laden review later this week.

In the meantime, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle appeared to get a big turnout from holiday audiences looking for something lighthearted, getting $72m since the Wednesday open and including $2m from the Amazon Prime Members preview earlier in the month. It’s definitely a good movie for audiences looking for a laugh. The Greatest Showman, which appears to be fighting critical reviews as well as the competition, only made $19m for the same six days, but we think is a great musical film with several Oscar-worthy songs.

Updating a previous report about Quentin Tarantino wanting to direct the next Star Trek film, it appears that this is on a fast track – and that in Tarantino fashion he wants an R-rated film, with J.J. Abrams and Paramount agreeing.

Typical tentpole films try to maximize their audience with no higher than a PG-13 rating, but 2016’s Deadpool blew the doors off perceived limitations of the rating. And while an R rating would allow the franchise to go “where no one has gone before”, it also could be a dangerous move for a beloved franchise that has typically been more family-friendly. I don’t know if this could end up limiting the audience, or blurring the lines of the R rating itself where parents risk taking kids to the film in order to not miss a piece of the franchise.

Time to get caught up after a very busy weekend capping off a few busy weeks around here with school productions…so some tidbits from the past several days…

Director Quentin Tarantino has an idea for the next Star Trek movie…we don’t know what it is, but according to Deadline J.J. Abrams thinks enough of the idea to pull together a writers room to discuss and develop a script. Tarantino typically operates with free reign over his original movies, where a franchise like this might present challenges, so we’ll see how this shapes up.

Disney has blasted the $5 billion worldwide barrier for a record third time this year, following Thor’s Hammer smashing through box offices all over. Thor: Ragnarok has crossed $800 million alone.

The kids from Stranger Things will be back as Netflix picked up a third season of the hit thriller series. No word on what 80s iconic properties might show up this time around.

Michael Green and Bryan Fuller have abruptly left the production of the second season of Starz’ American Gods series. The two brought Neil Gaiman’s novel to the small screen and acted as executive producers/showrunners. No reason so far as been given for the departure, but rumors are that budget cuts were being imposed by FremantleMedia North America’s new head of scripted programming, Dante di Loreto.

The U.S.S. Discovery will get to fly on…CBS All Access has renewed Star Trek: Discovery for a second season. The first season so far as broken all subscription records for the streaming service, following the crew of the Starfleet ship while one crew member seeks to understand herself.

Six episodes have been released so far, with three more to go before taking a break, and the final six to be released starting in January.

Star Trek: Discovery, which premiered last night on the CBS broadcast network (slightly delayed due to football) before it goes exclusively to the CBS All Access streaming service, pulled in 9.6 million viewers and a 1.9 rating in the 18-49 demo.

It is expected for those numbers to increase in the Live+7 as people watch it on a delay.

Our impression of the show from a single viewing is that it does seem like an acceptable member of the franchise so far, although there are some issues. Most notably for us there were three things: First, although it supposedly takes place in the original series timeline (not the “Kelvin” timeline of the movies), it takes liberties with the established canon, like Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) being an apparent ward or adopted daughter of Sarek and raised as if Vulcan, yet a seemingly important familial relationship has never been mentioned and stretches the canon thin. The Klingons are yet again changed, and the fact that the U.S.S. Shenzhou is apparently a more advanced starship than the original Enterprise of our childhoods.

And we never even get to see the title ship in the premiere!

I’d like to see more, but I’m firmly in the camp of not paying for yet another streaming service – even for Star Trek.

[Edit: A previous version of this article accidentally transposed the number of viewers]